


Flowers in the Attic

by cm (mumblemutter)



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Dubious Consent, Heroes: Volume 5, Implied Incest, M/M, Mindfuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-01
Updated: 2010-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-06 22:34:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mumblemutter/pseuds/cm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three years is a long time, especially when it isn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flowers in the Attic

**Author's Note:**

> Directly follows episode 4x17, _The Art of Deception_, then takes a sharp turn to the left. Written for mimesh.

(1) He's thinking of Emma when he knocks on Parkman's door. He's thinking of her bleeding fingers and the expression of fear on her face and of people screaming and dying, of being unable to do a damned thing about it. He's thinking of Ma, and her telling him, "Peter, don't. I can't lose you, I just can't. Stay away from Sylar, please."

He's thinking of revenge, and hate, and how walling Sylar in a basement while he sleeps might have been, at some point, something he'd celebrate. Maybe over a bottle of expensive wine while they toasted Nathan and everyone else that Sylar killed.

He's thinking, mostly, that he hates his life.

(2) Sylar's worst nightmare is being alone. He comes at Peter, hopeful and needy, grabs ahold of him and says, "I was afraid I would be trapped here forever, all by myself." Eyes wide and grateful. It's not the way Peter thought they would meet. In his mind he has all his powers back and they come at each other with balls of lightning firing from their hands, laying waste to the universe in an attempt to get at one another. In his mind it ends with both of them dying, finally and forever, their ashes falling like snow onto the heads of unsuspecting people far below. Sylar pauses, and tilts his head curiously. "I apologize - I've been alone for so long. Are you here to kill me?"

"No," Peter says, when he can finally get his mouth to work. "I'm here to save you."

Three years is a long time, especially when it isn't. Peter says, "No you're wrong, it's only been three hours," and Sylar looks confused, and Peter sighs. "No you're right, it's been three years. I thought I was the only one left alive."

"What happened," Sylar asks. "What happened?"

"I don't know," Peter replies. "But we'll figure it out."

(3) It's not a real apartment, is what Peter realizes. Which makes sense, nothing here is real. This is Sylar's brain, and this is the home Sylar has chosen to build for himself, surrounded by memories of a calmer life. "I have no powers or I would have flown around the world looking for someone, anyone else," he tells Peter, and Peter feels a vein in his temple start to throb, but he tells himself: your body isn't really here, and after that all he shows to Sylar is an expression of mild interest, and concern. "As it is, I have tried everything else. There is simply no-one here but me." He pauses then, and his eyes narrow. "Why don't you want me dead. I've done such terrible things."

"It's not like I have much of a choice, Sylar. Look around you, do you see anyone else. If I kill you, I'll be alone as well."

The problem is, obviously, clearly, that they're in Sylar's head, and Peter's nothing but an interloper. They're in a Matt Parkman-created nightmare world that's still built upon the structure of Sylar's fears, and when Sylar finally says, reluctantly, after showing Peter the guest bedroom and then finally running out of reasons for them to keep talking to one another, "I guess we should rest, maybe," Peter realizes: the second Sylar falls asleep, the entire universe starts to fall apart. He screams and he screams until at some point he realizes he's not dying, that he's still here, adrift in Sylar's mind, that he doesn't actually need to breathe, or eat, or even stay confined to his own body. Because, unlike Sylar, he knows this universe isn't real.

(4) If three years is three hours, then he doesn't need to leave, not immediately. He can still save Emma, still save everyone. He just needs a little time. He runs his hand along the wall and behind it he can feel reality pressing down, an almost unbearable weight. Sylar says, "That's new. What is this?"

"It's probably not important," Peter says, and Sylar frowns, but he doesn't press the matter. He's Sylar lite now, mostly lost and alone and kind of entirely pathetic, so grateful that Peter's here that he imagines that the two of them could ever have a relationship that involved civil conversation and helping one another, as if they were friends.

(5) At some point Sylar says, "I am sorry I killed your brother, Peter," and Peter laughs and laughs until he can't breathe, which, again, shouldn't happen, but he's still getting used to not thinking within the restrictions of his body. Still getting used to the realization that in Sylar's brain, there are no rules for him to follow.

(6) When Sylar sleeps Peter wanders through dark and empty spaces, and spaces filled with the stench of blood and the screams of the dying. A woman, thin faced and needy, wheedles, "Gabriel you're such a good boy. You're my best boy, always." Another woman dies, and a child cries pitifully. A teenaged boy, awkward and gangly, musters up the courage to ask the girl of his dreams to the prom and she laughs in his face. A blonde girl - Peter pauses at Elle's face, constricted in pain. He tugs on the memory and watches it unravel, from laughter to desire to a shared understanding to her smiling up at Sylar as if he were the only man in the world. Strange, that a sociopath could love. He spools the threads back, all of them, and destroys them with the crush of his fingers. Sylar doesn't deserve this.

(7) Nathan is buried under heavy locks and chains, deep in an underground chamber filled with signs that say: Here there be dragons. Nathan's in a suit and a tie, sitting at a table with a deck of cards in front of him. "Who are you playing," Peter asks. He slides into the chair opposite Nathan and waits for him to look up.

"No-one. I'm just waiting." Nathan tilts his head, and Peter is stupid and delusional, but even he can see that there's not much left of Nathan Petrelli, who once was the brother of a man named Peter. But perhaps, just enough. "Do you want to join in? It's five card poker." He pauses, and then he frowns. "Peter," he says. "Pete."

"Do you want to go out, Nathan? The sun is shining."

"I've tried. It's locked. There's no escape."

Peter reaches across the table and grabs Nathan's hand, laces their fingers together the way they used to when they were younger and Peter thought he was in love. "But I'm here, now. I came here to rescue you."

What bits of Nathan are left, Peter will take. They hold hands and walk out, and Peter kisses him in the sunlight, slow and desperate, and Nathan shudders against him and starts to dissipate, breaks apart, atom by atom, until there's nothing left but air and a whisper of a sigh and the taste of him, still on Peter's lips. But Nathan's mark has always been indelible, and Peter couldn't scrub him out if he tried.

(8) Nathan haunts Sylar's brain like a specter, wreaking havoc subtly and cruelly, in ways Peter would never be able to dream of, not if he stuck around here for the next ten years. Peter is a sledgehammer and Nathan is a sculptor's knife, reshaping and rebuilding, mapping neurons like stars.

(9) Peter finds the child, bespectacled and weeping for his mommy in the middle of the desert. "She's gone," the child says, and lifts a tear-stained face to Peter's.

Peter grabs his chin gently, and swipes a thumb across his cheek. "There there," he says. "It's allright. I'm here now. You don't have to be afraid. Do you know who I am?"

Gabriel Gray nods his head. "You're Peter. You're here to save me," he says, eyes shining bright with belief. Peter smiles and picks him up, and when Gabriel buries his face in Peter's throat for once Peter doesn't feel revulsion, doesn't feel hate coursing through his veins like blood.

"It's okay," he says. There's a car that wasn't there a second ago, and a road that stretches, tar black, into the distance. Peter opens the passenger door and buckles Gabriel in carefully, smooths his hair away from his face. "This car," he tells Gabriel, as Gabriel nods his head seriously at him. "Is exactly like the one that my brother used to own."

Nathan had driven up with it at one point, fresh from the Navy and brimming with the idea that he was going to take his baby brother out for a roadtrip, parental objections notwithstanding. Not that his parents ever objected, if anything they wanted nothing more than to hope that Nathan would somehow rub off on Peter. It never worked, but Peter remembered hot sticky nights in Motel Sixes, both of them endlessly wrapped around each other, shutting everything else out. Peter runs his hand along shiny silver chrome, and then he realizes: it's not just familiar, it's exactly the same, and that's when it hits him, that's when he finally gets it.

Gabriel falls asleep at one point, and the world doesn't disappear along with him. Peter laughs, and turns the radio on to Donna Summer.

They end up at a diner that Peter recalls has the best pancakes in the world. It should be breakfast time, he decides, and the sun rises over the horizon, bright and golden. It's empty at first, when he leads a still sleepily yawning Gabriel into it, but Peter fills it up with a waitress here, a diner there, another young couple over there, and the cook in the background, barking out orders. None of it is particularly distinct, and if he squints they all disappear, but Gabriel doesn't seem to notice. He climbs cheerfully into a booth and swings his legs, his eyes behind his glasses wide and curious. "Pancakes, kid," Peter says. "You need to try these."

(10) He recalls his childhood only dimly, with Nathan looming larger than almost everything else. He never thought of himself as particularly unhappy growing up, and in retrospect it could have been far, far worse. For Gabriel, Peter wants the proverbial picket fence, the cute puppy in the charming neighborhood and the constant sound of children laughing joyfully. Half of the world he builds is dredged up from his own memory, the rest, the bits that don't quite fit, he realizes at some point, are Nathan.

Christmases with trees and presents under them, and him carrying Gabriel up to the bedroom when he falls asleep clutching his brand new toy train, and when Peter has tucked him in he sits by the bed and speeds up time, fills in the gaps in years with scraped knees that are kissed better and baseball games and football tossing, and a child that's secure in the knowledge that he is loved.

It gets easier, eventually. Some days he even forgets that everything is made up.

(11) He waits until Gabriel is eighteen to fuck him, but Gabriel's been wanting it for years, ducking his head shyly and dropping hints that remind Peter of nothing more than himself at that age, desperately in love with his older brother and needing to know if Nathan felt the same.

"I love you," Gabriel says, over and over, when Peter has him spread out on a four poster bed and is rocking into him, slowly and steadily. "Oh god, I love you, please, please. Please." Peter shushes him with a kiss and wraps one hand around his dick, jerking him off roughly until he comes with a high, reedy yelp, and then Peter comes too, and when he finally collapses on top of Gabriel, the _I love you too_ that escapes his own lips is entirely the truth.

(12) "So this is it," Gabriel says, squinting at the wall. Peter just shakes his head and hands him the sledgehammer.

"I need you to break through, Gabe. Both of us need to. I can't do it myself. Do you understand?"

"Of course." He leans forward and kisses Peter on the lips. "Are you ready?"

Peter reaches out to smooth down the collar of Gabriel's jacket, gray cashmere wool and soft to the touch. "One day," he says. "Remind me to tell you about our brother."

\- end -


End file.
